They Need Us. He Says So.

 Drivers need us.

That’s the point Nick Maxwell makes in an Edmonds (Washington State) News editorial.

Maxwell isn’t some granola-eater who “looks like an environmentalist.” Rather, he is a certified climate action planner for Climate Protection NW. In other words, he has training, experience and expertise that I appeared to have, according to one of my neighbors.

He also seems very observant. In his article, he mentions drivers’ annoyance when they can’t find a parking space while electric vehicle charging stations stand idle in the same parking lot.

He discusses some of the reasons why there aren’t more electric vehicles on the road and points out that it’s not the only reason why drivers can’t park after they’ve made their way through traffic jams.

He notes that in the lot he mentions—and at rail and bus stations—bicycles and eBikes are locked up. But they’re not, contrary to some drivers’ accusations, “taking” “their” parking spaces. Maxwell—and I—have yet to see a bicycle parked in a space designated for a car or truck.

Thus, he says, if more people cycled on to school, work, shop or go to concerts or ballgames, there would be fewer vehicles to jam the roads and fewer drivers competing for parking spaces.

He also says that more cycling, walking or use of mass transit would keep gasoline prices down or, at least, moderate their increases, especially during the summer, when people drive the most.

That last point got me thinking back to an exchange I had with a motorist some years ago. He castigated me—and all cyclists—essentially for inconveniencing him. Then he accused us of “acting like you own the road when we (meaning drivers) pay for it.

I explained that I was paying for that road just as much as he was. Like many other people, he believed that he was paying some sort of tax that I wasn’t. In fact, funds to build and maintain streets, highways and other infrastructure comes from the general pool of taxes everyone pays. The only tax I don’t pay that he pays is on gasoline.

Moreover, non-drivers subsidize drivers in other ways. As an example, if you live or work in a building that offers “free” parking, how do you think the property owners are paying for it. I am sure that the rents or prices they charge are adjusted upward, however slightly, to include what drivers get for “free.”

Oh, and I won’t even get into the fact that we, cyclists, don’t pollute or otherwise spoil the fresh green (or blue or terra cotta or whatever color) outdoor spaces people like to drive to for picnics and the like.

So, I would say that automobile drivers need us—cyclists, walkers and users of mass transportation—even more than Nick Maxwell shows his readers.

Do I Look Like One?

I was on my way to the post office when one of my new neighbors spotted me.

“Excuse me, can I ask you something?”

“Well, that depends”: my usual response to such a question.

“I’m going to ask you this because you look like an environmentalist…”

She wanted some advice on what to do with some seeds that have sprouted. Now, I don’t know whether my response was any more sagacious than what I could have told her if she had asked what to do about a guy. I was, however, intrigued by her perception of me.  “What made you think I’m an environmentalist?”

“I always see you on your bike.”

While my reasons—which I hardly think about anymore—for cycling aren’t primarily about the environment, they do help to keep me in the saddle. For one thing, I know that I’m putting a lot less carbon in the air than I would if I were driving. For another, even though I’ve had more bikes than the average person during my life, I have kept and ridden a few of them—including at least three of my current bikes for longer than most people (or Americans, anyway) keep their cars. That might also be a reason why I recycle and reuse whatever I can:  I believe that my ethos behind such practices is linked to fixing whatever I can on my bikes rather than replacing them with the “newest and latest.”

To my new neighbor, my bike gave me away as an “environmentalist.” Might she also have seen me sneaking granola when I thought she, and nobody else, could see me?

Emissions

Here I was, thinking that Trump/MAGA crowd had a lock on science denial or sheer irrationality.  And that the Swiss education system inculcated its charges with scientific literacy and critical thinking skills.

But it seems that you don't have to belong to tRUMP end of the elephant party to come up with something as ludicrous as "Kung Flu" or the notion that climate change is a "Chinese hoax." (And here I was thinking that Donald Trump's racism extended only to Blacks and Mexicans.)

You see, a professor and researcher at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland wrote something that translates into something like this:

Today everything is climate.  Many want to replace the car with public transport and bicycles.  They believe that the latter burden society less and are climate-friendly.  That's wrong.

Photo by Toby Jacobs

It appeared in a column the professor wrote for the German-language Swiss newspaper Handelszeitung. The esteemed writer and thinker goes on to make the claim that official data show bikes, trains and buses to be better than the environment because of "creative accounting" and "official tricks."

He bases his claim on the following:

Although the whole debate is about energy and climate, the bicycle is treated as a perpetual motion machine. But cyclists need additional energy. For this, they have to eat more, which puts a strain on the climate.

Economical cars need 5 litres of gasoline per 100 kilometres, causing 12kg of CO2 emissions, i.e. 120 grams per vehicle kilometre – and 30 grams per passenger kilometre for a four-person occupation.

Cyclists consume around 2500 kilocalories (kcal) per 100 kilometres during normal riding. They have to compensate for energy and muscle consumption through additional food intake. So, they would need about 1 kilo of beef for the 2500 kcal. This causes them to produce 13.3kg of CO2.

Meat-eating cyclists therefore cause 133 grams of CO2 per passenger-kilometre – four times the number of well-occupied cars. If they obtain driving energy from milk, they emit 35 grams of CO2 per passenger-kilometre, which is still almost 20 percent more than the car. Unfortunately, this miserable record also applies to vegans.

  

First of all, he conveniently doesn't analyze the CO2 emissions of a vegan cyclist's diet. From what I understand, it's much less than that of a meat-eater.

Which brings me to my next point:  He doesn't mention anything about the diets of the motorists or their passengers.  If anything, I would expect them to be more likely consumers of meat--or any other food whose cultivation, processing and preparation produces high levels of emission--than cyclists.  So, if one adds the emissions produced by the diets of motor vehicle drivers and passengers, and adds them to the emissions created by automobiles (and what it takes to keep those vehicles on the road), how does it compare to what cyclists,  and mass transportation users generate?

Oh, and as one commenter to the article noted, if we follow the professor's logic (if we can call it that), "joggers and hikers are even worse than cyclists because they need more food" and "pedestrians are the climate killers par excellence."  

So...Is the author of the, um, interesting column an engineer,  environmental scientist, or any sort of expert on public health?  

Of course not.  Reiner Eichenberger is a professor of financial and economic policy.  

He reminds me of another economist who tried to deny science:  Peter Navarro, who famously claimed Anthony Fauci "was wrong about everything I have interacted with him on."  Professor Navarro defended his assessment thusly:  "My qualifications in terms of looking at the science is that I'm a social scientist."  Hmm...The university I attended wouldn't allow liberal arts majors to fulfill their science requirement with economics, political science, sociology or the like.  But the esteemed professor has a Ph.D. and therefore, he said, "I understand how to read statistical studies, whether it's in medicine, the law, economics or whatever."

Now, to be fair, I am sure that Professors Eichenberger and Navarro do indeed know how to read statistical studies.  Mark Twain said there are lies, there are damned lies and there are statistics.  In that vein, I will say that there are fools, there are damned fools and there  folks who quote statistics and there are folks who quote the folks who quote statistics."  In other words, just because someone can quote numbers, it doesn't mean they have critical thinking skills--or what's known in my old neighborhood as a bullshit detector. 

Deliver Your Vote!

Today is Election Day here in the US.

I have already voted and I exhort you to do the likewise.

If you've been reading this blog--or simply know anything at all about who I am, in addition to being an avid cyclist--you probably can guess how I voted.

There was a time when I didn't vote because I "didn't think it mattered."  I can understand why people--including you, perhaps--might feel that way.  After all, your ballot is one of millions.  And you might live in a jurisdiction where one candidate or party or another is "safe."

Well, let me tell you, no district is as "safe" as it seems.  The past few elections should have taught us that.  I can recall hearing, in early 2015, that Hilary Clinton was a "shoo-in" for the Presidency and Donald Trump's candidacy seemed like a joke. Right now, here in New York State, the gubernatorial race is much closer than anyone had anticipated--and I have seen many more signs for Zeldin than for the incumbent Hochul.

Even if you don't think reproductive rights or even bodily autonomy, let alone equality for women, LGBTQ people, immigrants or any other marginalized people are relevant to you, I assume that, since you are reading this, you are a cyclist or have some sort of interest in bicycles.  While most candidates don't mention cycling or bicycle infrastructure specifically, there are a host of other issues that relate directly to what we love.  They include, of course, the environment and transportation.  But cycling also intersects--to borrow Kimberle Crenshaw's postulation--with economic and social justice in all sorts of ways. We need not only to encourage people to trade four wheels and one pedal for two and two whenever possible, we must also make communities--and jobs--safe and affordable so that people who aren't athletes can ride bikes to work or school.

Anyway...these Boy Scouts (confession:  I was one in my dim, dark past!) are delivering the message in more ways than one:

Paper, Plastic, Glass, Aluminum--And Pedals

When I first became a dedicated cyclist, as a teenager in the mid-1970s, we were still seen as latter-day hippies:  Whether we rode to work or school, for fitness, to race or tour, or just because, we tended to be more environmentally-conscious than other people.  In fact, the environment was the very reason some people rode. It was, and is, one of my reasons.

The funny thing is that, nearly half a century later, cycling is still associated, correctly, with environmental consciousness.  These days, though, those associations have more overtly political overtones:  If you pedal, drive a hybrid or electric vehicle, look for ethically-sourced products and recycle, even when it isn't mandated, that makes you a"lib" and an enemy to the MAGA crowd.

There is, I must say, at least some truth to the stereotype.  We live up to it every day:

 

Why They Left Out Bicycles

On Sunday, the US Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act. Perhaps not surprisingly, the vote split along party lines, with the 50 Democrats voting for it and 50 Republicans rejecting it.  Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, broke the tie.

As I understand it, the Inflation Reduction Act is a shrink-wrapped, rebranded version of what Biden and other Democrats actually wanted. The fact that some things that were included in the Build Back Better Act, which passed in the House of Representatives, were omitted from the IRA is no more an oversight than calling it the "Inflation Reduction Act" was not an attempt to make the energy- and environmentally-related aspects of it more palatable to the Senate's two most right-leaning Democrats, Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.

One key omission were tax breaks and other subsidies for bicycles and other two-wheeled vehicles that are powered wholly or in part by human energy. The original Build Back Better proposal included a $900 tax credit for the purchase of an electric bicycle and a pre-tax benefit to help commuters with the costs of bicycling to work.  

That tax credit was available to cyclists before 2017, when Republicans repealed it as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.  The Build Back Better Act would have essentially restored it but I think Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader of the Senate, who worked with Manchin on the IRA, realized that he had to take out some of its "greener" parts to get Manchin and Sinema to agree to it.

I say that it's unfortunate, not only because I am a cyclist.  As Harvard Kennedy Center visiting  fellow David Zipper told Alex Dougherty of POLITICO, "We need not just to shift people from gasoline to electric cars. We need people to shift from cars, period." But, as he points out, there's nothing in IRA that "makes that process easier or faster or more likely to happen."

Any piece of legislation that ostensibly has anything to do with the environment or energy but omits bicycles is a bit like a bouillabaisse without fish or a caponata without eggplant. 

Can't Fix Your Bike? It's An Environmental And Economic Justice Issue

When I first became a dedicated cyclist--nearly half a century ago!--bicycles were touted as environmentally friendly alternatives to gas guzzlers.  At the risk of sounding like someone who pines for "the good old days," I'll say that most adult cyclists of the time were not merely "signaling" their concern for our habitat; they, as often as not, made other choices in line with their values.

Today, while some are "bikewashing" their lifestyles, there are some who are genuinely concerned with such matters as human-enhanced climate change.  So, while they might cycle to work or school (or, at least to the bus or train that takes them there), recycle the bottles, cans and other packaging they use during their lunch breaks and, perhaps, try to buy as local as possible, they could unwittingly be making at least one choice that undermines their other efforts.

To wit:  Their bicycles might be part of the problem.  Now, I don't mean to be pick on such folks.  Most people, especially if they're buying their first bike in decades, aren't familiar with how or where their bikes are made, or anticipate the normal wear and tear--and repairs--that come with regular use.  They also assume that "new is better," which is sometimes, but not always true.

Most mechanics, or anyone who's been cycling for, say, two decades or more, won't necessarily agree that "new is better."  It's true that almost any derailleur made today shifts better than almost any made fifty or forty years ago.  And, depending on your point of view, some other parts today are more efficient, convenient or lighter than their predecessors.  

But one problem is that most of those parts--or the bikes themselves--are not built to last because they're not made to be fixed.  "If I get a Huffy from the '90's, chances are I can actually make repairs to it," says Mac Liman. It will be heavy, but at least "the steel will hold together," she explains, and the result will be a serviceable, if inelegant, piece of basic transportation.

Liman would know:  She's been a mechanic for 19 years, the past  14 at Denver's Bikes Together shop.  Those Huffys were sold mainly in big-box shops like Wal-Mart, which sold out all of its bikes in March 2020.  "We're already starting to get those bikes," Liman lamented, "And we can't fix them."

One problem is the shortage of available parts caused by COVID-19-related manufacturing and supply chain disruptions. But an even bigger issue is simply the poor quality of those bikes:  Their frames crack and they have non-standard parts that can't be replaced at a reasonable price. "I've seen bearing cups that just fall out of hubs, so there's no way you can rebuild them," Liman says.

Her experiences have led her to join a petition calling for bikes to be repairable.  Its earliest supporters were mechanics at non-profit bicycle co-operatives and training programs like Recycle-A-Bicycle.  Cheap bikes from big-box stores are often donated, or brought in for repair, to such shops.  And people who buy bikes from such places are looking for something good and reliable for not very much money.

Now I have to admit that I was once one of those elitist bicycle snobs who snickered when I saw a department-store bike.  But I now understand that people buy such bikes, not because they're stupid, but because they don't know (yet!) why they should--or can't afford--to buy something better.

So, making unrepairabe bikes, like making almost anything else that's disposable, contributes to degrading the very environment some for which some folks are signaling their support by being seen on a bike.  And, as with so many other environmental issues, it's also a matter or social and economic justice, because it affects the working poor even more than those who buy those shiny-new Linuses and Brooklyn bikes.

Cycling For Our Lives

Whenever I went to Florida during the summer, I woke up before sunrise so I do a ride before midday. Or, if I started later, I would plan to spend a couple of hours at the beach, or in a shady area, at lunchtime.  The idea was, of course, to avoid the midday heat and humidity, which could be unbearable.

For me, that was not an imposition.  If I did an early ride, I could have lunch and go to a movie or to stores--which are air-conditioned--with my parents during the hottest part of the day.  And who could complain about spending time on a beach in Florida?

But for others, the consequences of extreme weather are more extreme.  I'm hearing stories about parents who, during the current record-breaking heat wave in much of the western US, wake their kids up before dawn just so they can go outside for a couple of hours before the heat is not only unpleasant, but sometimes dangerous.  

Others, though, face much worse, including the loss of their homes, their livings or even their ways of life.  As an example, aboriginal peoples in Arctic regions will lose everything from their culture to their traditional diets if the ice continues to melt at current rates.  Likewise, people in coastal regions all over the world face displacement, and in still other regions, famines could result from crop or fishery failures or destruction.

James Baldwin once remarked that the future is like heaven:  People exalt it, but they don't want to go to it now.  He was talking about the Civil Rights struggles, but he could have been describing the current situation:  People know we need to change our ways, but not now.  Policies for reducing greenhouse emissions set goals for 2050 or some other year many of us won't see.  During the past few years, however, we've seen and heard evidence of accelerating climate change and environmental degradation. 

"The worst is yet to come, affecting our children's and grandchildren's lives much more than our own."  That blunt assessment came from an unlikely source:  a report compiled by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists who have been studying the issue.   The 4000 page document is not scheduled for official release until February 2022, but Agence France Presse received a draft yesterday.

From Ecoist magazine

I have devoted a post to this report because there is hardly a better reason to encourage cycling.  One of the chief causes of climate change is fossil fuel combustion, and one of its main sources is motor vehicle use.  I understand that, given the realities of how too many places are designed, and the ways in which some people make a living, some driving is necessary and inevitable.  But every time I ride by a line of SUVs transporting only their drivers, I have to wonder whether they're just going to the store down the street.